This invention pertains generally to apparatuses for viewing, researching, reviewing, and editing electronic documents and more specifically to viewing, researching, reviewing, and editing multiple electronic documents simultaneously.
In the last decade, technology has changed the manner in which education and research is effectuated in most homes and classrooms. Almost every university in the United States now has an electronic aspect included in its curriculum, ranging from classes being completely offered online, to providing online libraries and research tools. CD-ROMs often replace reference books, instruction manuals, and trouble-shooting and help manuals. A dictionary or textbook may no longer be sitting next to a student on a desk, but all of its contents may be available 24 hours, seven days a week, upon a click of a mouse. Reference materials are also offered over the Internet via web pages or on CD-ROMs, and often replace their paper counterparts.
School assignments may further be posted electronically. Some of these assignments are conducted in teams or groups, where each team or group member contributes his or her share for completing the assignment. Such team assignments or study group collaborations are often exchanged via e-mail, and may go through many revisions and edits. Conducting such edits or performing other types of research generally requires one to make a print-out of a document being reviewed or edited, generating a paper version of the document. Once the research or editing has been completed, the print-out of the document is often discarded. This creation, use, and then discarding of paper copies is wasteful and expensive as well as time consuming.
Therefore, a need exists for an apparatus and a method for displaying one or more versions of a document for viewing, comparing, and editing purposes. A user interface for such an apparatus should be simple and convenient to use. In addition, the apparatus should be easily portable and include detachable displays with memory and editing capabilities. Various aspects of the present invention meet such a need as well as the needs of other possible applications.